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Does Sebastian Coe, one of Britain’s famous runners, have the staying power to clean up the badly tarnished International Association of Athletics Federations that he heads? The author of a damning report into corruption in the track and field organization thinks so. But the IAAF’s current president has his share of critics. And his organization has sunk very low. This won’t be an easy sprint.

The IAAF became a cesspit of conspiracy, corruption, bribery and doping under its disgraced former president Lamine Diack, who ran the place for 16 years, with Coe as his vice-president for half that era.

Diack was cosy with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a time when Russian athletes were suspected of doping but weren’t held to account, the report found. Diack also “sanctioned and appears to have had personal knowledge of the fraud and the extortion of athletes.” He, his son and his lawyer formed “a close inner circle” that functioned as a “powerful rogue group,” the report said.

Diack now faces criminal charges in France alleging he took more than $1.5 million in bribes from Russian athletes and officials to cover up failed drug tests.

And much of the blame circles back to the IAAF Council, on which Coe served, loyally supporting Diack and insisting that track and field is essentially a clean sport. The oversight body appears to have been willfully blind and deaf to the rot on its watch, the report found.

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Written by former World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound, a Canadian, the report concludes that members of the IAAF Council “could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics” under its jurisdiction. The corruption was “embedded in the organization” and “cannot be blamed on a small number of miscreants,” he found. This is his second damning report dealing with Russia’s state-sponsored doping program and the corruption it spawned.

“Far more IAAF staff knew about the problems than has currently been acknowledged,” Pound wrote. “It is not credible that elected officials were unaware of the situation affecting … athletics in Russia. If, therefore, the circle of knowledge was so extensive why was nothing done? Quite obviously there was no appetite on the part of the IAAF to challenge Russia.”

Even so Pound backed Coe, the British middle-distance runner and multiple Olympic medalist who succeeded Diack, to remain in charge, saying he is well-positioned to lead “reputational recovery” at the damaged organization.

This scandal has thoroughly discredited the IAAF and forced it to suspend Russia’s track and field federation, leaving its team at risk of missing the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this year. Russia’s anti-doping agency and its Moscow anti-doping lab have also been suspended.

It also puts enormous pressure on Coe.

As WADA president Sir Craig Reedie put it, welcoming Pound’s report, “WADA is alarmed that (corruption in the IAAF) ultimately allowed doped athletes to evade punishment and sanctioning for long periods of time. It is hugely disturbing that individuals at the highest levels of the IAAF were abetting and covering up doping for their own financial gain.”

In Reedie’s mind, “this flagrant disregard for the law and anti-doping rules undermines trust amongst clean athletes, and indeed the public, worldwide.”

Most telling of all, it took “courageous whistle-blowers and investigative journalists” to blow the lid off this scandal. The IAAF, Coe included, was too busy insisting the sport was squeaky clean.

This day of frank reckoning is welcome, as are Pound’s recommendations for better IAAF governance and tighter anti-doping safeguards.

But corrosive skepticism will linger toward the IAAF and its promise of a cleaner field. Coe has an enormous challenge, enforcing tougher rules and challenging the cheaters. It is not reassuring that Pound also found the IAAF to be an organization that remains in a state of denial to this day. Coe can expect his critics to give him exactly no benefit of the doubt if he stumbles.

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